Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

New Years resolution's aren't supposed to start in March, but in February we had to say goodbye to my Dear Mother.
So, March is the beginning of doing what matters & I've been dreaming of having an aquaponics system for the last 5 years - so now is time to make it happen. (it has taken me all of 2013 to get this far).

Here is the IBC that I started.


IBC donated by very lovely oil and gas company. (Thank you very lovely oil and gas company).

I am having an ebb and flow system. I just installed the Bell Syphon which my husband told me should be called a Bell drain. Purchased the whole thing from eBay. Very well made - fits IBC perfectly.

I am going solar (no electricity to my site) and I have purchased 12v pump but I am stuck right now for some 3/8inch flexible water tube on account of no shops being open in Mitchell on a Sunday.

Next step will be to get the flexible water pipe so that I can check that my Bell 'drain' works as it should. I already have a 12v battery on the charger and a solar panel that recharges the 12v battery.

I am concerned about the extreme heat and extreme cold. I have blue metal which I am intending to use as my grow media. I am not sure about the site - it doesn't get full sun - it is protected on 3 sides. Blue metal is kind of black and it does get very hot out here.

I am a fairly lazy gardener & I hope to grow veg from seed and I am thinking I would like to have some native perch - but it may well be too late in the season to purchase them & so if I have to, I will use some barbs or gold fish. My friends are taking bets on how many days before Mr & Mrs Crow take up fishing at my place. My bet is not very many, so some bird proofing will be needed early on.

Sorry to hear about your loss. Always sad to loose a family member.

You said the IBC was from a Gas & oil company? Do you know what it was filled with?

If it was filled with oil or something like that, you could be in issues poisoning the fish.

There are plenty of things you could line it with to keep the heat out, look through the IBC threads, and you should be able to find some options.

Just with the Solar option, don't stock to hard, otherwise you might wake up to a few dead ones overnight.

I am sure it will turn out to be a great system. Just curious as to how large a battery you are using... it is important to size the battery so it does not drain below about 30% and that it is a battery that is suitable for the job (deep cycle) otherwise you will end up with a useless chunk of lead quite quickly. Remember to calculate battery size on worst case scenario, and that would be the system receiving no sun for perhaps days on end and therefore the battery being drained further and further which will also kill it. Perhaps you already know this or have an appropriate sized battery/ies but if not it is worth looking into.

Best of luck!

Thanks for your replies Tom77 & Columnmn.


Thanks - not oil in the IBC - but not food grade either. they were using them for water second hand - but there could be still some residue - I guess I will find out how much soon.


Thanks - yes lots of options. I have had a little look. I like the wood lined ones and I do have some offcuts from decking etc - just not sure if I have enough to do the whole thing.


Yes from reading I realise that I will kill some fish and so until I get the hang of this I intend to stock something cheap and easily replaceable.


Well yes I do know this because I have already created one useless chunk of lead.

This week I am setting up some pumping and getting some water in there. I am going to use a pipe around the grow bed burried below the grow media with holes in it - not sure I really know what I am doing - but only one way to learn......

If you bury the pipe you run the risk of it becoming clogged with roots. Better to have it on the surface where you can inspect it.

Edit if you are using PVC pipe do not glue together otherwise you will not be able to pull it apart to clean if it is blocked with fish crap or roots. Cheers

Thanks for the advice - not to bury the outlet pipe into the grow bed. I already found out about not using plumbing glue the hard way - my bell siphon was glued & this was a problem when I needed to shorten the pipe in the center because my grow bed is a tad too shallow.

Waay underestimated the amount of grow media needed. Went on quick outing this afternoon to pick up more. I quite like washing it in these yellow feed bags as they are almost water proof and most of the red sand is separating from the blue metal.

May get to do a little more blue metal washing through the week - but I am thinking that maybe the rest will need to wait until next week - I have almost taken all the skin of the tips of my fingers washing.

Unless you think the gravel has had something poisonous to your fish on it I wouldnt bother with washing it. A lot of people do wash it but if you dont the water will just be a bit dirty for a few weeks and then it will settle down. I never washed my expanded clay and the water settled to be clear quickly.

Agreed Tom, Silt settled out from blue metal pretty quick. Didn't bother with egg white or anything.

..or lazy mans washing option - just fill it up with water and dump the first drain load of water from the growbed into your garden clearing out most of the suspended clay

+1 the garden always needs a bit of watering anyhow.. so it's not like it's a waste

Thanks everyone for you advice about washing the gravel.

Last weekend I finished the rest of the gravel with a quick rinse & I setup the pump. I also relocated a few small silver perch from a water hole in our creek that is about to dry out. Most of them are still in at end of day 5. I had 2 casualties. I have sown tomato seeds so far.

I am using a water test kit left of from aquarium keeping days (2007).

Ph 7.5
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
The other measures are hardness - I only have Mitchell Artesian bore water at my disposal.

Day 8 and no further silver perch casualties.

I am getting algae growth in the fish tank. This position is protected from the western sun only and has pretty much all day sun. It isn't excessive in itself but in just 8 days it is a little bit impressive if it happens to grow at the same speed or if it is like lillypads. I have wrapped a piece of tarp around three sides & we will see how this goes.

Would like to get some bristle nose cat fish as they love algae. Yesterday my daughter and I caught a reaonsonably large fresh water turtle. (The turtle was taking all the bait). We put the turtle in the fish tank as we wanted to stop the turtle from taking all the bait. I think that the turtle will be able to eat the kind of baby bristle nose catfish that they have at the petshop.

can you put a bristle nose cat fish in an IBC with Jade Perch?

I have a reasonable size one in an inside aquarium

The jades can be aggressive to each other, so I wouldn't risk it.

Also, I found out the hard way that bristlenosed aren't very temp tolerant, make sure the can handle your water temps.

An update.

All the jade survived a Mitchell winter even though the water in the bird bath froze solid a couple of times. The are move quite quickly and very difficult to get a good look at them let alone take a photo. They look to be about as long as my index finger. They were very small babies when I got them.

Since the rain I think that the Jade have been snacking on tadpoles. There were quite few little ones and they didn't last very long or grow very big.

I don't think the jade perch eat snails - plenty of snails.

The solar pond pump is still running with the same battery. However the ebb and flow didn't run for enough hours in the day for vibrant growth in the grow bed. At first I thought is was due to my using fish tank fish food. Swapped to aquaponics fish food - still same problem. Hoever the solar pump rarely has any problems. I once got overwhelmed with too much algae - but that was really operators fault. It never has any problems.

I now have added a second pump connected to mains power and the ebb and flow operates 24 hours. Have already had a power failure and the pump lost suction. Didn't burn out. Got it going again.

The second pump is a fluval fish tank pump without the filter & already had to add a gauze to the inlet as a snail just big enough to fit up the pipe went for a swim and cut the flow for a dribble. I intend getting an aquaponics pump real soon.

I have updated photos of the growth. We just has 200mm since the 23rd of November so everything is vivid green - so will be interesting to see the progress once we go into the dry season again.

Next setup - I will take more time to reinforce the base because one corner has subsided on the sand and it has caused a level problem.

That's it guys - Happy New Year & impressed to see all the active growth over the year.

Kind regards
Judith